John Schick teaches fifth grade at Alderwood
Elementary School [http://wwwald.bham.wednet.edu/] in Bellingham,
Washington.
John has been teaching for four years -- the past two years at Alderwood
and two
years in Steilacoom, Washington.
Alderwood is a Title One school and has about 300 students, many of whom
receive free
or reduced lunches. Students at Alderwood come from a rich variety of
ethnic
backgrounds: Vietnamese, Cambodian, Mexican, Ukrainian, and members of the
Native
American Lummi tribe. Bellingham is a community about 90 miles north of
Seattle and is home
to about 60,000 people.

(To learn more about John and his students' Virtual
Ellis Island Museum, take a look at his Teacher Case in the Table of
Contents on the left.)
Unit Description

In this unit, students will conduct primary and
secondary
research to learn more about their cultural and ethnic heritage. These
explorations will serve as a personal link for students to the historical
importance of immigration in United States history. Such personal
connections
serve both to make history more meaningful and accessible to students and
provide a vehicle for developing students' historical thinking skills.
Students will use their research to develop web pages on their own cultural
and ethnic heritage that will be formed into a virtual museum.

Students' research will include interviews with family members,
investigating their
heritage using library and Internet resources, and visiting
sites set up by other children that are related to the concepts of immigration
and ethnic and cultural heritage.

Some important considerations: Some
students may
not be able or wish to explore their family's heritage. Adopted children and
children from troubled familes may prefer to engage in more generalized
research
on immigration. An ideal subject for such students would be to research and
write about the history of immigration in the United States and at Ellis
Island
in particular. Further, Native American children will have a different
perspective on immigration, since many of their ancestors were always here.
A
research project on their families' heritage can provide these students with
an
invaluable chance to express their cultural heritage which is so often denied.
Students may also be given the chance to research how Native Americans
viewed the
waves of immigration that took place. African American children also will
have a
different perspective on immigration, since many of their ancestors were
involuntary immigrants. These students can be given a similar chance to
research
and document their cultural and ethnic heritage. They may also be given the
chance to research the realities of the forced immigration that Africans
went
through, such as the capture and sale of slaves in Africa and the middle
passage.

Objectives

Students will learn more about their own, as well as their
classmates', ethnic and cultural heritages.

Students will learn about history by conducting primary research
through
interviewing family members.

Students will learn about history by conducting secondary research
through
literature and WWW/Internet searches for information about their cultural
and
ethnic heritage.

Students will have the opportunity to learn from their peers by
visiting
sites set up by children that are related to the unit's concepts of
immigration
and cultural heritage.

Students will learn about the resources available on the
WWW/Internet through research and guided browsing.

Students will gain a wider audience for their writing and research.

Materials and Resources

In developing our lessons and activities, we made some assumptions about
the hardware
and software that would be available in the classroom for teachers who visit
the
LETSNet website. We assume that teachers using our Internet-based lessons
or activities have a computer
(PC or Macintosh) with the necessary hardware components (mouse,
keyboard, and monitor) as well as software (operating system, TCP/IP
software, networking or dial-up
software, e-mail and a World Wide Web client program, preferably Netscape,
but perhaps
Mosaic or Lynx). In the section below, we specify any "special"
hardware or software
requirements for a lesson or activity - over and above those described above
- as
well as our sense of the Internet access required to do the activity.

For advice on how to adjust the plans if you have only one
computer with a hook-up, see below.

Unit Lesson Plans

Lesson One: Introduction to
Immigration. Read and discuss selected resources about children and
immigration. Children develop an understanding of the concept of
immigration and reasons why people immigrate.

Lesson Two: Immigration Explorations, Part
1.
Organize students into research groups to visit John Schick's Virtual Ellis
Island Museum. This site will provide models for students to
complete their own research. While students visit the site they should
evaluate what type of research students carried out to create their site, how
they
structured the site, and what sort of information and graphics they included.
The list of criteria students develop from their research will guide them in
conducting their research and constructing their own site.

Lesson Three: Oral Histories. Using the
criteria
they developed earlier, students begin to conduct oral histories of family
members to learn about their cultural and ethnic heritage. Prior to starting,
students and teachers develop a list of questions that students will use
in their interviews and research.

Lesson Four: Immigration Explorations, Part
2.
After they've completed their oral histories, students conduct secondary
source
research using the internet and library resources to learn more about the
backgrounds of their family's cultural and ethnic heritages. Students can
work
together in research groups that have common ethnic/cultural interests.

Lesson Five: Final Reports. Students
write
reports, including a summary of their research findings to be shared with
friends and families. Students should draw on
the criteria developed during their initial explorations to guide the format of
their reports.

Relation to Standards

We have drawn on the historical thinking standards outlined by the
National Center for History
in the Schools as well as evolving standards for K-12 language arts from the
National Council of English Teachers (NCET). We feel that these standards
provide excellent guidelines for teachers on how to conceptualize social
sciences work in
their classrooms.
One Computer versus Many

The plans for this
unit are tailored to fit classroom situations where students and teachers
have
access to several computers with Internet access. To accomodate the
classrooms which do not have access to a computer lab with full Internet
access,
students can work in research groups to explore internet sites and conduct
research.

If you have only one computer hooked-up
to the internet, you may choose to do one of several things.

During the intial stages of the unit:

If you have the technology, you may hook-up the computer to a TV
monitor or LCD projector. This will allow the whole class to see sites in the
preliminary stages when students are exploring sites created by other
children.

You may choose to have students rotate through computer with
Internet access in groups.

You may also download files from the Internet and save them to a
disk. Then transfer Netscape
[http://home.netscape.com] onto your other computers. Now you can transfer
the
files you down-loaded to the other non-internet computers to view with
Netscape.
This will not allow students to explore the pages with hyper-links, but they
will be able to access and view the information by opening each file with
Netscape.

During the research phase of the project:

You may choose to have students rotate to a computer with Internet
access in research groups composed of students from similar backgrounds,
allowing them to gather research as a group.

You may choose to focus on one ethnic/cultural background for a
given period of time-- say one day or week-- where you explore the links
broadcasting with a TV or LCD projector. This way students get a sampling
of the sort of information that is available.